At last month’s XXI World Congress on Safety and Health in the Workplace, ASSE joined more than 40 organizations from around the world to sign the Singapore Accord, demonstrating the Society’s commitment to excellence in OSH professional and practitioner capabilities so they may improve safety for the world’s workers.

“This is one of the most significant initiatives produced on the international stage by the OSH profession,” says ASSE President Jim Smith, M.S., CSP, who represented ASSE for the signing.
The landmark agreement signals a commitment to accepting and using the Global Occupational Health and Safety Professional Capability Framework, which was developed by the International Network of Safety and Health Practitioner Organizations (INSHPO) to improve the effectiveness and impact of this role in every industry.

The framework is a consensus-based document developed from an analysis of data from international professional associations and certification bodies. It defines what OSH staff should be able to do competently for employers, their core functions, what education and training, and guided experience they should possess, and what skills they should be capable of mustering to carry out those functions. According to the document’s framers, it also defines the difference between someone at the professional level and someone at the practitioner level.

“It was my great honor as President-Elect of INSHPO to receive the Accord on behalf of INSHPO,” says Terrie S. Norris, CSP, ARM. “This momentous event is not the culmination of our work, it is the beginning as we continue to share the framework with more organizations in more countries in an ever-changing work world.” Norris was ASSE’s 2010-11 president.

“For the first time,” Smith says, “we have achieved a common global commitment to defining capabilities for OHS professionals and practitioners, which in turn will raise competencies and ultimately lead to fewer worker injuries, illnesses and fatalities.”

Smith also discusses the framework and its importance to the OSH profession in his October 2017 President’s Message in Professional Safety. Read it here.

May 2018

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